Lamere

I. Facts and Proceedings Below

On March 13, 1997, petitioner LaMere killed Steven Brownlee in an alley behind Brownlee’s apartment in Great 9094 LAMERE v. SLAUGHTER Falls, Montana. LaMere admitted that he killed Brownlee but disputed the circumstances of the killing.

LaMere had two jury trials in Montana state court. During the first trial, LaMere, a Native American, argued that he had acted in self defense. The jury acquitted LaMere of deliberate homicide, but convicted him of mitigated deliberate homicide. The Montana Supreme Court reversed this conviction, hold- ing that the court clerk had violated Mont. Code Ann. § 3-15- 505 (1997) by summoning jurors by telephone, with the result that Native Americans were under-represented in the venire. State v. LaMere, 2 P.3d 204 (Mont. 2000).

Because LaMere had been acquitted of deliberate homicide in his first trial, the State charged only mitigated deliberate homicide on retrial. At the time of the second trial, mitigated deliberate homicide was defined under Montana law as delib- erate homicide committed “under the influence of extreme mental or emotional stress for which there is a reasonable explanation or…